


and now good morrow to our waking souls

by zlot



Category: Bleak House - Dickens
Genre: Community: yuletidefuckery, F/M, First Meetings, First Time, Pre-Canon, Romance, Victorian, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:19:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zlot/pseuds/zlot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>And now good-morrow to our waking souls,<br/>Which watch not one another out of fear;<br/>For love, all love of other sights controls,<br/>And makes one little room an everywhere.</em></p><p>Lady Honoria Dedlock, before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and now good morrow to our waking souls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree/gifts).



When Honoria is nine, her mother slaps her across the face; indeed, all her life she will associate that particular age with the sharpness of it, somehow intensified rather than deadened by her mother's kid glove.

Honoria's mask of indifference has not yet been perfected and she screams up into Mrs Barbary's face like a demon until the Barbaries' one maid--undersized except in the arm--manhandles her into her room. She calms down almost immediately, once there is no audience, but gives a shriek from time to time when she feels she is in danger of being forgotten.

Later, Mrs Barbary comes in, smooth-lipped and detached, and explains that Honoria must cease playing games with the village children and coming home absent one glove, her petticoats muddied. The family stands poised to inherit a great sum that will be the making of them, and Honoria is to be a lady.

Her mother's slap is the heralding trumpet of their change in fortunes.

They do not yet know that Jarndyce and Jarndyce never afforded a penny to anyone outside the legal profession, but there is something genteel in a Chancery suit, and the Barbaries are poised to become the better class of upstarts. Mr Barbary manages to trade in his curacy for a living as rector on the strength of being named a suitor alone, and Honoria and her elder sister Maud are sent away to school. Scholarship students, to be sure, but with expectations. Honoria must learn to play the piano a little, and sew a little, and make conversation a little, but mostly, as her teachers remind her, she must stop laughing with her mouth open.

 

____________________________

 

Maud, who has been brought up to a different sphere of existence--perhaps to be a curate's wife like her mother, or more likely a parish spinster with a basket of tracts--takes but poorly to lady-lessons. She is handsome, and proud in her way, but displays an unfortunate combination of her father's intense faith and her mother's detachment. Honoria, with no patience for long abstracted silences or Spurgeon's sermons, attaches herself to other classmates with sisterly zeal. The sisters do not talk much.

Honoria grows up very beautiful, strong-featured and dark; when she returns home, Mrs Barbary notes the masculine eyes on her daughter's person with something like a softening. Even the local lord of the manor aims protracted gazes at seventeen-year-old Honoria when he invites the residents of the rectory to dine at his venerable pile, Chesney Wold.

"Do you play, Miss Honoria?" he asks, shortly after the gentlemen join the ladies in his drawing-room.

"Oh, not worth mentioning, Sir Leicester," she says carelessly. "I am afraid I make an indifferent pupil and will only disgrace my family."

He gallantly disagrees, and presses her, but Honoria will not play the piano for him, no, not even a little. She is excitable in society and speaks too loudly, but avoids responding to his questions and attempts at conversation without much attention. It is remarkable how young women are so much more capable than their mothers at ignoring amorous possibility in the middle-aged.

When Honoria is twenty, the Barbary girls are sent, as a last-ditch effort to animate the placid Maud and smooth the rough edges of Honoria's deportment, on a slightly shabby version of the Grand Tour. One of their well-to-do classmates, Miss Chester, is going abroad to Italy and France and cannot do without Miss Honoria for the space of a year, and Miss Barbary is swept along in the ensuing schemes. Mrs Barbary would not trust Honoria so far away as Cheltenham without Maud, even supposing Miss Chester had a score of well-meaning elderly chaperones.

 

____________________________

 

In Venice, however, the Misses Barbary happen to meet a young man from their district and the seemingly impossible happens: he makes Maud laugh. Loutish, hyperbolic, intensely loud: his mere presence makes Honoria long to throw herself into a canal and wait for the bubbles to cease. But Maud, silent Maud, is all smiles. She is much in this Boythorn's company, along with his friend, who turns out to be a distant relation of the family's, a John Jarndyce. Honoria finds him far less irritating, but awkward and restrained in the face of her attempts at conversation.

Maud otherwise occupied, she looks elsewhere for entertainment.

Honoria's particular friend, Georgiana Chester, having a weakness for regimental uniforms that translates to a compass-like inclination towards the nearest red coat, has found out a company of British soldiers temporarily billeted in Venice. "How on earth," Honoria asks, "did you secure the necessary introductions?"

"You dear little thing, Honoria," Georgiana replies. "These little things are no barrier. In every place one goes, one knows someone who knows everyone." And so Honoria agrees to a picnic with some of Miss Chester's new acquaintance.

This is how Honoria meets James Hawdon.

Does she fall in love at first sight? Decidedly not. His looks--especially when compared with the other officers, who are all of them quite conventional looking, English to the backbone--are laughably Byronic. He is dark and brooding, and stares about in a wounded manner at nothing in particular. Sulking in the Venetian sunlight! Honoria feels she would like to excuse herself, run behind a tree or a bush, and laugh at him. She might have done it, had Georgiana not been there, a breathing reminder of her lady-lesson days.

But the diverting appearance of Captain Hawdon does hold Honoria's attention, and she amuses herself throughout the day's outing by attempting to make him smile.

"Do you enjoy Venice, captain?" she asks him, with rather too wide a smile.

He starts, as if abstracted. "I--I suppose, Miss Barbary."

"You suppose? Is not everything calculated to be pleasant? Do you not delight in the weather, for instance?"

"The weather--yes," he says, looking crestfallen, and Honoria digs her fingernails into her own palm to keep her countenance and fixes her gaze on a bread crust.

"I don't think I will ever have the strength to go back to England, Captain Hawdon," Honoria says. "Rain is not for me. I will stay in Venice for ever, though without Miss Chester I expect I will have to play the tambourine in the streets to survive. You agree it would be worth it, I am sure?"

He stares at her, and she has the gleeful apprehension that he thinks she is mad. (In actuality, he is not taking much note of her silliness because she looks so handsome, all dark smooth hair and flushed cheeks. The other officers have not overlooked these facts either; Miss Barbary will be a general topic of discussion in the barracks for the next four days.)

Honoria, by no means habitually unkind, eventually remembers to ask the captain some sincere questions. She learns, more from the gaps in his sentences than the actual words he stammers out, that his family is reasonably well bred but is in distressingly reduced circumstances. His commission was purchased by a wealthy merchant uncle who considered doing so his last act on behalf of James's welfare.

"A dangerous way to earn one's bread, Captain Hawdon," Honoria says, serious at last, fingertips toying with her napkin.

He looks straight into her eyes for the first time. "Ah--yes. But it was my choice. It is dangerous to be alive, Miss Barbary. We take our lives into our own hands each day when we step out of our doors. The soldier's life is better, I think; it is more honest. I would rather--rather know." It is his longest speech to her, or to anyone, all day.

When Miss Chester rises to leave, Honoria gives Captain Hawdon her hand and asks him, quite genuinely, to call.

Georgiana is well satisfied with her afternoon; Honoria's absorption with Childe Harold, as she insists on calling him, left Miss Chester free to entertain three charming young officers all on her own, and she had been more than usually arch for the occasion, archness being (she thinks) her most advantageous mode of address.

Honoria, finally at liberty to enjoy a hearty laugh at Hawdon's expense, avails herself of an abbreviated version of that privilege. But she does hope he will call, especially as a lack of engagements the following afternoon forces her to spend an afternoon watching Maud--Maud, of all people--blush at the bellowed gallantry of the indefatigable Boythorn. Honoria ponders with irritation the possibility that her sister will marry before her, but cannot summon even a token jealousy as she gazes at Boythorn's gigantic head rearing above her. Like a whale, she thinks.

 

____________________________

 

Honoria has a marked opinion of her own power to intimidate young men; she has even been known to show a certain smugness regarding the issue. She is surprised when Hawdon calls, and calls repeatedly.

He always brings along a fellow officer, though never the same one twice, and while each comrade that accompanies him to the Chesters' villa is a sworn devotee of Georgiana's, Honoria is mortally certain that it is Hawdon who originates each visit.

Why does he come so often to see her? She asks herself this many times. Does she remind him of some sister or, heaven forfend, sweetheart back in England? Is he snubbed by the rest of Venice's English society, leaving him no other source for tea cake? Is he so withdrawn into himself that he grows sick of his own silences, and must seek out chatter in fashionable drawing rooms?

(In reality, he comes because Honoria is beautiful, much more so than she guesses at yet, and looks straight into his eyes when she speaks to him. He comes because she is unafraid of mice and spiders, and never cries out if she should accidentally hurt herself, but laughs and winces and digs her fingers into his arm. It is because she often leaves one button undone on her gloves.)

"Who is he?" Maud asks one evening as the sisters prepare for sleep. "Another fancy of that girl's?" (Georgiana, by practicing her archness on Maud and "her beaux," has not ingratiated herself with the elder Miss Barbary.)

"I suppose so," Honoria replies, eyes on the looking glass as she lets down her hair. It amuses her to see Maud, usually so narrowly perceptive of any impropriety, made blind by her own infatuation with Leviathan Boythorn. She does not speak of her surmises to her sister.

 

____________________________

 

"Miss Honoria?"

She jerks, startled. She has been nearly asleep with boredom. "I apologize, Captain Hawdon. I was not attending to whatever it is you weren't saying."

He smiles. "Quite understandable. I am sorry I am so dull and stupid this afternoon. Would you care to take a walk?"

She jumps up, almost sick with gratitude; she has called on all her years of training to register complete indifference to the maddening drone of Boythorn's latest onslaught of by-my-soul-Jarndyces.

But how did Hawdon know, how does he always _know_, Honoria asks herself, despite her anxiety to leave the villa as quickly as possible. (She is not yet aware of how his long silences mask a careful mental inventory of her facial expressions, her shifts in posture and position, the movements of her hands.)

 

____________________________

 

She could never say for certain when she began to study him. Honoria is more used to being the observed of all observers, but she finds he repays her interest.

"Where did you learn to write so beautifully?" she asks him one afternoon. It is his turn to start. He has been absorbed in dashing off instructions to his sergeant and has not felt the faint warmth of her just above his shoulder.

"Ah--my uncle. He lived with us, and was a great scholar. Or my mother thought he was a great... But he had rheumatism."

He stops, evidently thinking this answer enough. "Yes?" Honoria prods.

"Well, he couldn't write, do you see? So I was his what-do-you-call-it. His amanuensis. I just had a schoolboy scrawl in those days, of course, but his hands were up to giving me a cuff if the handwriting didn't measure up to the fineness of the words. I have taken more care ever since."

"What was he writing?"

Hawdon smiles weakly. "A dictionary."

Honoria looks away quickly. "Oh!" A giggle escapes anyway.

Hawdon looks at his hands. "Don't pity me too much, Miss Honoria," he says, as if laughing at him was a form of sympathy--for Honoria it may well be. "I learned more from my uncle than I did at school. More Latin, certainly. And he used to recite poetry as a special treat."

"Oh dear! I'm not sure I would have received it as a reward, captain. I can't bear rhymes."

Hawdon smiles. "I didn't like it for the rhymes. I liked--liked how poets had to find the right word, the most beautiful way of expressing even commonplace sentiments. I think sometimes that is why I say so little. I cannot ever express myself as--as I would like."

Honoria is strangely moved, as she always is when he responds to a careless remark of hers as if it warrants a serious reply. She inclines her body towards his. "You mustn't worry about finding the right words if you want to tell me something, captain. I respect your silence, but much prefer hearing you speak."

His eyes find hers. "Thank you." And then, as if resuming an earlier part of conversation, he says, "And in any case, my uncle had an odd taste in poets. The metaphysicals, Miss Honoria, do you know them?"

"Only Donne's Holy Sonnets. Maud reads them aloud. I think she matches him in devotion to the most high."

"God was not the only thing for which Donne had passion. Would you," he pauses, "would it be too forward of me to send a volume to you?"

 

____________________________

 

"Georgiana."

"Honoria! I am nearly asleep. Do not begrudge me a few hours' rest, not after the night we had at the Greys. I can still feel Miss Agnes's piercing soprano making inroads against my eardrums."

Honoria snorts. "You are plainly awake. Now listen to this. It sounds a bit... I don't know."

Georgiana half raises herself on the chaise. "Go on, torturer. I never knew you to read so much, not even when it was our nominal business at school."

Honoria reads:

 

_"As our blood labours to beget_

_Spirits, as like souls it can,_

_Because such fingers need to knit_

_That subtle knot, which makes us man:_

_   
_

_So must pure lovers' souls descend_

_T' affections, and to faculties,_

_Which sense may reach and apprehend,_

_Else a great prince in prison lies--_"

 

"Honoria," Georgiana interrupts, drawing herself up and setting her chin, "is this _poetry_?"

"Yes, but don't you think--does it make you feel..."

"I thought so. My dear friend." Georgiana's voice could cut through icebergs. "I really can have nothing to say on the matter. You know how I feel about versifying. I have been most vocal about it."

She has.

Georgiana sinks back into half-sleep. Honoria murmurs to herself:

 

"_To our bodies turn we then, that so_

_Weak men on love revealed may look;_

_Love's mysteries in souls do grow,_

_But yet the body is his book._"

 

____________________________

 

It happens in a gondola. Maud says, "I am engaged, Honoria."

She says it in as calm a tone as she would employ to report a loose floorboard.

It isn't at all the thing, but Honoria cries, "What?" The gondolier looks interested, but fortunately his English is extremely limited.

"To Mr Boythorn," Maud says, her lips quirking upward slightly at her sister's consternation. "He has written to father. I know you and Georgiana have been much engaged, but you must have noticed--"

"Of course I have noticed that the wh--that Mr Boythorn has attached himself to you." Like nits, or lampreys, she does not add. "But have things really reached such a fatal point? We have only been in Venice four months, Maud!"

"I know perfectly well he is the only man I shall ever marry. Before I met him, I never thought to marry at all. He is," Maud pauses thoughtfully, "very amusing, and very kind, and very devoted."

"Good God!"

"Honoria!" For the first time, a trace of animation comes into Maud's placid features.

"I am sorry if I express myself too strongly, Maud, but--" Honoria falls silent and looks at her sister more closely. Their faces are so similar--large eyes, full lips--that Honoria used to think of her sister as a slightly cracked looking glass. She wonders if this is what a Barbary in love is meant to look like.

"I only wonder," Honoria resumes, "if you are certain you are in love. He may well be amusing and kind and devoted"--two out of three isn't bad, she thinks uncharitably--"but do you think of him when he is gone? Do you notice the tiniest details in his appearance, in his conversation? Does a day without him cause pain? Does his appearance in a doorway cause your entire body to flush hot--"

"Honoria," Maud says again, but with less shock. She thinks a moment, staring at the water of the canal. "I think you and I use different words to mean the same thing. I am quite sure."

And as Honoria looks into the glass of her sister's face, she is also sure, quite sure. It should have been obvious long ago.

 

____________________________

 

When Hawdon next calls, Honoria is all confusion. Her growing control over her surface helps her, but she knows how closely attuned the captain is to her moods by this time. He will notice her blushes, the uncertainty of her hands. She does needlework for a while to give them a purpose. Then she looks up and sees the slight raise of his eyebrows. Of course: she never does needlework. She puts it aside.

"Are you well, Miss Honoria?" he finally asks, his voice low.

She does not answer. Is it better to say no, claim an indisposition? Is it better to be bluff and brisk and claim it is nothing?

He catches her wrist, no doubt to feel the quickness of her pulse. His fingers are cool against the heat of her skin.

She stands, shaking free.

"I would like to walk a little," she says.

"Of course," Hawdon says.

They take a gondola to a public park, but do not speak much until Honoria is free to move. Her legs are not long, but she has something of a purposeful stride, and the air feels pleasant against her face.

When they pause to rest in a small alcove, Hawdon sits while Honoria stands. The sun glints against her hair; she has forgotten Georgiana's spare parasol. Even in repose, there is something hurried in her posture, hunted.

She turns and finds his eyes on her. His eyes are eloquent: concerned, gentle. She exhales. He stands. She steps. He bends.

Their lips meet. A beginning.

 

____________________________

 

James does not find it much easier to speak, afterwards, but he must. In halting words, he makes it clear to Honoria that he has loved her since their first meeting--silently, intensely, hopelessly.

"Hopelessly nothing," says Honoria, and goes home engaged, and tells no one.

 

____________________________

 

The delights of a secret engagement, of pouring tea placidly for a man one has given one's whole heart to, of calling a man "Captain Hawdon" when the night before one has been writing a letter addressed to "my soul's beloved James"--these pleasures are hinted at by our novelists, often with a disapproval that we cannot wholly credit. It is wonderful, Honoria finds.

James is much more at ease once he is sure of Honoria's love. He begins to be gallant to Georgiana, of all people. The good creature does not know how to react and confides to her friend that she was beginning to think that the captain quite liked Honoria, but now she is sure he is finally proving to be the poetic rake he has always resembled. Honoria only smiles, and is careful to bestow her best smiles on Lieutenant Formby at the next opportunity.

"You will regret that," James whispers as he pretends to show her a print in a book he has picked up. "Formby will never be content now until you plight him your troth."

"I am spoken for, sir," she breathes, laying a gloved hand on his for the briefest of moments before laying her next letter--"ever your loving Honoria"--on the book's pages. And she laughs. She cannot help it.

 

____________________________

 

Maud does not notice; in her own quiet way she is just as happy. Georgiana, who has been "in love" herself three times since leaving England, is thrown off the scent by their newfound discretion. Mrs Chester has not, it may be surmised, been the vigilant guardian she represented herself as to Mrs Barbary; Venice has far too many attractions for a lady of fashion to be too concerned with the occupations of girls.

"But what of your parents?" Hawdon asks as they stroll into a bright piazza, her arm warm inside his. "Should I write to them?"

Honoria does not answer immediately; she is thinking of an evening years ago--Chesney Wold, the lord of the manor, the odd expression of her mother's mouth in the carriage home. But Maud is already engaged to a man of property, will that satisfy them? She knows it will not.

"Oh, James!" she cries, with a sudden laugh. "What does it matter what they say? I am utterly decided and there's an end. I would do just as well to come home Mrs Hawdon and shock them all into complicity. I am Mrs Hawdon now as far as the world is concerned. Brace yourself, sir, to be henpecked."

He smiles, and looks distracted, but he is too fearful of the end of his hopes to insist on asking for her parents' consent. "Married already," he says instead. "Alas for my wild oats."

"What deceivers you men are," she says, eyes on the sky. "I am sure you have a little tart at every inn and tavern from here to Timbuktu."

"Mrs Hawdon, I protest," he begins, but he is interrupted by a pair of arms, her arms, being thrown about him. The Italians around them do not take any notice. Honoria's mouth is warm at his ear. "Mrs Hawdon!" she whisper-shouts, defiant and triumphant and incredibly happy.

 

____________________________

 

With a month remaining in Venice before Honoria's party moves on to France, their plan is set. She will return to England and wait for him though hell itself should gape. The regiment expects to return within the year. Honoria will know by then, she says, whether it will be best to throw themselves upon Mr Barbary's mercy or ride, ride, ride for Gretna Green. She rather favors the latter, she says.

"And you will sell your commission," she says. "For I will not be a widow, no, not before I am eighty. We will find a safer position for you in London, and find some tiny dollhouse cottage, and I will study domestic science--"

He laughs, earning himself a pinch.

"I _will_ study domestic science," she continues, "and amaze you with my household contrivances. And how many children shall we have, and what will they be named? I hope you like sturdy boys."

"I hope they will fit into the dollhouse cottage, Mrs Hawdon."

"Oh! Young boys are tremendously bendable. We shall be snug. Snug enough to heat the house all winter without a fire, I have no doubt."

 

____________________________

 

The plan is threatened--she will not say "ruined," not for a thousand pounds--by the news that Hawdon's regiment has received its orders: not for England, but for the West Indies, indefinitely.

Honoria turns pale at the news, but talks determinedly of the cottage, the boys, domestic science--anything but strange diseases and armed conflicts. Every time James looks at her with a helpless, wounded air, she interrupts him, terrified he will release her from her engagement. (She does not need to worry. He could no sooner give her up now than his own name.)

They have sixteen days.

Honoria spends a sleepless night thinking over her options. The next day, she confides in Georgiana, tells her everything. She also tells her she will die if Georgiana does not help her. Georgiana is much more romantic than practical and believes this.

The next day, Georgiana wheedles her mamma to allow her and Honoria to spend two weeks with friends of the Chesters, in Padua. There is a great ball planned, and Georgiana longs for a change of scene, is bored to death with Venice.

The girls are granted leave. Georgiana goes to Padua and tells her hosts that Honoria has fallen ill and must remain in Venice after all.

Honoria moves, with two weeks before James's departure, into his lodgings in a shabby district of Venice. She expects this part of the plan to go wildly astray, for a landlady to affront her, but the Italians there seem open-minded, or at any rate incurious, about the sudden feminine presence in the rooms of the quiet English soldier.

Honoria is nervous. She would like to prepare a meal for James, despite the lack of time to study domestic science beforehand, but he explains that in bachelor rooms like his, there are no such facilities. So she sits, small in a chair, while he speaks to the signora about dinner.

They dine, and say little. He is plainly not sure she should be there. He is a young man and does not feel he is like to die soon; Honoria's reputation seems the realer concern. He clears his throat.

"Not on any account, James," she says instantly, laying down her knife. "I've explained it all, and here I am, and here I stay."

"Honoria," he says, eyes lowered.

"Mrs Hawdon," she insists.

He gives his plate a small, wretched smile. "And where will you sleep?"

Her words are steel. "With my husband."

 

____________________________

 

"No, not like that. Tug, harder--yes!"

"Are you in earnest when you say you actually cannot do this yourself?" James asks.

She spins to face him. Sudden practicalities have made her less shy of him. "I am. Don't be absurd. I am a lady, Captain Hawdon, and what is a lady? She is a person who has a maid to dress and undress her. And had I stays that fastened in front, would I need a maid to help me? No. And then I would not be a lady."

He stares at her a moment, and then throws back his head and laughs. After a moment, she joins him, giggling uncontrollably into his chest, sagging a little into his arms.

"Oh, James," she manages, feeling her eyes' moisture sinking into his shirt, "I have never had my own maid in my life and yet I have had to wear a dratted laced corset for years now. All of us must take turns at home with our one little maid. And at school and here in Venice Maud and I have just dressed each other. It is a contemptible nuisance."

He holds her gently at arm's length then, and smiles into her eyes. "I am your maid now."

He displays some confusion this first time, but his fingers quickly find the trick of the laces. The corset joins the dress and the crinoline, heaped on the divan. A woman's chemise he is more familiar with, but the shyness returns as the last layers stand between them.

"I can do it, now," Honoria says. She reaches for the neckline; her hands tremble, visibly. He catches one and presses his lips to the palm of her hand.

"Are you sure?" he asks quietly.

She laughs, shakily. "I am offended, Captain Hawdon. Do you not want--"

"More than--yes," he says, stammering a little as he has not for weeks. "But I know what--what--. Do you?"

Honoria cannot think of a glib reply. "No."

He looks away from her, so near and beautiful. His face is agonized, and she steps forward. She says, "But the body knows."

She loosens her chemise and pulls it over her head, then steps out of her drawers. She stands naked before him in the firelight.

"_O my America_," he whispers. "_My new found land._"

He does not touch her, yet, but drinks her in with his eyes. She finds it hard to look at him. She looks into the fire and stands, shoulders proudly back but legs unsteady and breathing short, as his eyes take in the smooth white skin of her legs, the fullness of her breasts. Finally she meets his gaze.

She cannot bear it any longer, and crushes herself against his still-clothed frame, arms around his neck, mouth wet and demanding against his. His hands touch her waist, the small of her back, so lightly it is nearly imperceptible, but somehow the touch fuels her passion. She is lightheaded, dizzy; she clings to him for support. He carries her to the bed.

She expects him to move quickly, to be brutal and animalistic and a stranger, but he is an experienced man, capable of taking his time. He remains her sad-eyed James. He lays her down and begins his explorations.

As his fingers trace designs on her goose-pimpled flesh, she closes her eyes and pictures his handwriting, imagines his looped j's and elegant t's drawn on her, her body the book.

"You could connect my freckles," she manages, disappointed at the unevenness of her voice, but inexplicably glad to hear the familiar answering rumble of his chuckle, made less familiar by the warm breath that accompanies it against her thigh.

She opens her eyes to watch him, the tribute of his tentative, reverent hands, the dipping of his face to touch with nose and lip and stubbled cheek her stomach, her hipbone. Easily, unthinkingly, she opens herself to him. And then she must close her eyes again, one arm over her face, as she delivers herself wholly to sensation: to coaxing fingers, to insinuating tongue.

(He is surprised--not unpleasantly--at how different she is from the paid women he has had recourse to when lonely before now. Their breathy sighs and exclamations of "Oh! Captain!" pale in comparison with Honoria's ragged breath and low, guttural moans. Her face glistens with perspiration--no, sweat--in the flickering light. She opens her eyes and stares at him, lips parted, terribly unguarded and trusting and needing him, and he can wait no longer.)

Honoria feels him withdrawing before she sees it, but is reassured to see him working ineffectually to remove his own clothes, and exhales a gasping laugh. What seems an age to him is only a minute, and his face is above hers, his hands guide her into position, and she feels him against her, easing inside.

There is pain no one has prepared her for, and she clutches at him in shock, but being Honoria, she bites her lip and does not cry out. He does not stop, and in time the ache subsides, once more, into frantic need, building pleasure. Her cries are raw and frenzied, by the end.

 

____________________________

 

When James has spent himself within her and withdrawn, she feels a moment of tremendous sadness at his leaving her. They are no longer one, but two, and the first day of her marriage is over, with only thirteen left. Tears well behind her eyes, but do not emerge; they remain within to sting her.

But she rolls onto her side, and there he is, James, shaggy and hesitant, already worried about hurting her, but clear-eyed and peaceful, no shadow on him. She slides into his embrace, and feels that thirteen days will last forever, will almost be too much when filled with this much joy.

**Author's Note:**

> The three quoted poems are all by John Donne. The story's title is from "The Good Morrow." Honoria reads from "The Ecstasy." James quotes from "To his Mistress Going to Bed."
> 
> Thanks to all my friends who offered to beta, even though I was too fiercely overprotective to let them, and who held my hand and cheerleaded instead: Michelle, Kyra, and Olivia, you are awesome, as is the entire YF crew.


End file.
